


Modesty has never been one of Mr Holmes' requirements

by dogandmonkeyshow



Series: Unforgivable Things universe miscellany [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Pre-A Study in Pink, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-03-31 23:08:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3996649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogandmonkeyshow/pseuds/dogandmonkeyshow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrea Mortimer is surprised to discover that she has applied for a position in the Department of Business, Industry and Skills. Now she needs to figure out what the job actually is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Modesty has never been one of Mr Holmes' requirements

**Author's Note:**

  * For [solrosan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solrosan/gifts).



> A note for solrosan: In your request you said: “I have a real soft-spot for Anthea and her relationship with the Holmes Brothers”. I've long wanted to write on this very topic, so thank you for giving me the excuse to do so now.
> 
> A second note, on names: I never use the name “Anthea” for Mycroft's PA because the only thing we know about her is that it isn't actually her name. My understanding is that the script for ASiP referred to her as “Andrea”, so that's the name I use for her. And seeing as the story is from her point of view, it made no sense for her to be referred to by an alias.

_...The successful applicant will have demonstrated the following characteristics: resourcefulness, diplomacy, discretion, and political acumen._

**i. resourcefulness**

When the email arrived in her Inbox, Andrea puzzled over both the subject line and the contents.

_Subject: Interview_

_Dear Ms Mortimer,_

_The Department of Business, Industry and Skills is pleased to inform you that you have been selected for an interview for the position of Co-ordinator, Policy Analysis, in our Strategic Policy Analysis Unit._

_Please present yourself for your interview at the Diogenes Club this coming Wednesday, 9 November 2008 at 2:00 pm._

_Yours sincerely,_

_H. Smythe_  
_Assistant Director, Human Resources_  
_Department of Business, Industry and Skills_

Andrea was, quite frankly, stumped by this missive. The email definitely had her address on it. She knew that she was the only Andrea Mortimer in the entire Home Office. But she had no recollection of having ever applied for any position in BIS, and if so it was unlikely she'd have ever applied for anything with the position title of Co-ordinator, Policy Analysis, which sounded like the sort of thing that would send her to the madhouse from boredom in under a week.

Amused at herself, she still booked the afternoon off, regardless. For she had no intention of going to the interview, as she was of the opinion that a job in a policy unit was a career-killer if there ever was one. And nothing sounded more tedious to her than sitting around a conference table all day listening to people argue over the minutia of trade policy. But she'd put in enough overtime in the last year to deserve an afternoon's shopping, in her opinion.

The element of the message that piqued her interest, though, and hinted that the message might not be exactly what it seemed, was the location of the interview: the Diogenes Club. Andrea recognised the name; she'd most likely heard it from her Uncle Cyril, who was supposedly something of a high mucky-muck at the Exchequer (despite his generic-sounding job title) and so knew all about the dens and denizens of Clubland. Other than the name, though, she didn't know anything about the Diogenes Club, and the internet was of no help to her at all. That fact alone was telling in a very specific way.

Over the course of the afternoon, she made a few of what she hoped were discreet inquiries, which resulted in nothing more than blank or wary looks. She knew then she was on her own to simply find the location of this supposed interview for a position she hadn't even applied for. For some time during the course of her inquiries, her mind had changed itself for her; she was most definitely going to the interview, if for no other reason than find out what was going on.

The more she thought about the situation, the more it began to smell like the 'tap on the shoulder', the old school approach to Intelligence recruitment. Of course, the security services now were entirely professionalised, with actual job adverts and formal interviews and they'd become (to some degree) just another part of the civil service. But there was something about the email that kept her mind going back to her Uncle's stories of her grandfather's work in the war; it made Andrea suspect that something similar was afoot, even though she couldn't understand why it was happening to her.

Her first instinct was to contact Cyril, but she hesitated. Scheduling her interview at a mysterious and apparently unknowable location was a test, that much was obvious. It soon became clear that Cyril was somehow behind her being placed in this situation. He had always loved to tease her with little puzzles and mental games, even when she was a young girl. If her assumptions were correct, this seemed to be just the sort of puzzle he would set her. If she was going to pass the test she was going to have to do it herself. The question was: did she want to? Did she want to work in Intelligence? And did she want to work for people who seemed to operate as if it was still the 1940s?

Being honest with herself, she had to admit she found the idea intriguing. Fours years at the Home Office had begun to pall and she knew her career was going nowhere. All she'd got out of it so far was too much of the most tedious sort of attention from the sort of public school oiks her brother had complained about when he'd been one ten years ago, and feeling as though her brains were slowly leaking out her ears through lack of use.

As she got ready for bed that night she made up her mind. She needed a change. She was prepared to make the personal sacrifices necessary for Intelligence work. She really needed to find the location of the Diogenes Club in the next 72 hours. And if her assumption about it being about the security services was wrong, she was going to be really disappointed.

In the end, it wasn't all that difficult. For a supposedly secret club, it was somewhat lax in keeping information about itself out of the public domain, at least in the past. She applied some logic (Would a gentlemen's club catering to Whitehall mandarins be outside the Clubland of St James'? No.), a bit of digging in more resource-intensive sources (her grandmother's collection of old Burke's), and a bit of lateral thinking (prowling through old London fire insurance maps at the British Library). It took her less than a day, all told, to narrow the search down to fewer than a half dozen sites, and an hour's footwork in her lunch hour put paid to all of them but one. 

~ + ~

The man sitting across the table was, by all outward appearances, what her mother would have referred to as 'a gentleman of the old school'. Though he was considerably younger than she'd expected, appearing to be not yet forty. But Andrea had spent enough time in Whitehall and around her father's friends to know that certain parts of the civil service seemed to fetishize this particular form of traditionalism. So it was to be Cheltenham manners, then, she thought to herself as she stood just inside the doorway of the small committee room.

He glanced at the chair across from him in an instructive manner and she sat. They looked at one another for a few seconds before he spoke.

'Good afternoon, Miss Mortimer.'

His accent was the definition of RP. With a hint of Sussex, perhaps? Good school, but not the very top drawer. Not posh. Just horribly, horribly competent if she was any judge.

'Good afternoon.' She wasn't surprised that the man didn't introduce himself. For a moment she considered asking him his name to see if he would make one up on the spot, or if he had a ready-made _nom de guerre_ available for such occasions. Her thoughts must have shown on her face despite her efforts, as he gave her a thin smile and the look in his dark blue eyes was very knowing. And she thought she sensed a trace of amusement, which did make her lean toward liking him, just a little.

But he didn't comment, instead opening the file folder which was the only thing on the long, polished table. 'Thank you for taking the time to see me. I imagine you have a number of questions you would like to ask.'

'Eventually. I'd like to hear yours first, though.'

That appeared to surprise him. Andrea suspected that was not a common occurrence, and she wondered if in this context it was a welcome surprise or not. 

'You took an unexpected approach to making your way here,' he said as if they were two bored strangers engaged in idle conversation at a cocktail party.

'In what way was it unexpected? What would expected entail?'

'You could have asked your uncle.'

'Yes, I could have.'

'But you did not.'

'No.'

'May I ask why not?'

'Because it was a test. To see if I could find the information myself.'

'No, that was not the nature of the test.'

She smiled a little at his admission and his countenance seemed to lighten a little, though he still did not return it.

'You wanted to see _how_ I would find you. And if I'd gone to my uncle we wouldn't be speaking right now.'

'Oh, no. We would be having a conversation. But we would not be having _this_ conversation.' He paused and closed the file folder, then leant back in his chair a bit. Andrea had the sneaking suspicion the interview was over and she had no idea what the result of it was going to be.

'I will have your file transferred to my office this week and you will begin on Monday. Does that suit?' The last question seemed to be for form's sake only, so she ignored it.

'You're very confident I'll accept.'

Now he gave her a smile. 'Oh, yes.'

 

**ii. diplomacy**

'Oh, lord.'

Andrea turned and caught the tail end of a grimace crossing her employer's face. 'Is there a problem with the agenda?' She schooled her expression to hide her anxiety; she'd never prepared for such high-level meetings before and wanted her contributions to be perfect.

'The agenda is fine.' He paused and seemed to be engaging in an internal debate. 'One of the attendees. She has—' He paused again.

In the three months that Andrea had been working for Mr Holmes, she'd never seen him so flummoxed. It seemed as though there was something he wanted to tell her and couldn't decide how, and was himself annoyed by that fact. She decided the best course of action was to ignore it; if he wanted her to know he'd tell her eventually. 

'Congresswoman Whelan will be one of the delegation.' He sat back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach in a gesture she found tellingly defensive. 'She is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, though not one of the senior members. I had hoped she would not be involved in this round of discussions.'

Andrea remembered the woman's name from the list of participants included in the briefing package from the Foreign Office. 'Do you think her presence means the Americans have downgraded the status of these discussions?'

Her employer gave her a penetrating look, but it was not dismissive, so she knew he didn't consider her question inappropriate. She was still unsure where the line was that delineated matters she was allowed to question from those she wasn't. As she watched and waited for his response, he gave her a cool, assessing look under which she didn't fidget or quail.

'The Congresswoman is— How shall I put this? Accustomed to a certain kind of attention.' To Andrea's astonishment, the man appeared genuinely uncomfortable for a moment before regaining his usual outwardly bland self-control. 'She has, for reasons unimaginable to me, decided that she is desirous of that sort of attention. From me.' He made a vague, dismissive gesture to himself.

Andrea continued to stand in the centre of Mr Holmes' office, unmoving, expression unchanging. She was afraid to say anything as various scenarios played out in her head: saying something he interpreted as glib and offending him; saying something too serious and appearing snide or pompous; or continuing to say nothing and appearing oblivious. The man had never before broached any subject with her that came close to a personal confidence, so she wasn't sure what, if any, response he would consider appropriate.

'You are allowed to say something,' he finally added, tone as dry as the finest gin.

'I'm sorry, sir. You've— Would you like me to—?' she stuttered, before pausing to gather her thoughts as a flicker of annoyance crossed his face. 'I'm not sure why you've told me.'

He gave a short sigh. 'There is no solution at the moment beyond hoping she's managed to find a more appropriate object of her—ambitions, since we last met.'

Half a dozen questions were tumbling around Andrea's mind and she assiduously tamped them down. 'Can you not just be honest with her?'

'Ms Whelan is, unfortunately, influential in certain parts of Congress. And her uncle is a Senator, and even more influential.'

She allowed her astonishment to show and she could tell he found her distress on his behalf amusing. 'This woman is an elected representative; and she would derail international security talks because you don't return her interest?'

'I have no idea. And no desire to find out at the moment. I had hoped she would lose her seat in November, but it was not to be.'

'Well, sir, if there's any way I can assist—'

He seemed genuinely surprised at her offer. 'Of course.'

Andrea thought that that would be the end of it.

Six weeks later, when the American delegation arrived, Andrea kept an eye out for the now-infamous Congresswoman Patricia Whelan of the 4th Pennsylvania District. Andrea wasn't sure what she'd expected, but it wasn't the woman she saw at the first session: an attractive, petite blonde of about forty years of age, well dressed and apparently well mannered from what Andrea observed over the day. Her demeanour was somewhat over-familiar, but Andrea knew to expect that from Americans.

The only thing that provided evidence to support her employer's story was that at every break in the proceedings, the woman made a beeline to his side and seemed quite invested in trying to engage him in conversation. None of the rest of the participants seemed to think the woman's behaviour odd, so Andrea kept her antennae tuned for any gossip or snarky comments from the American aides and other support staff.

By the middle of the week, Andrea was beginning to wonder if perhaps Mr Holmes had been imagining the woman's interest. All seemed entirely above-board. That is, until the dinner at the American embassy on the fourth evening of the talks. During the reception before dinner, Andrea stood in the corridor outside the ballroom, checking her phone for any status messages that she would need to bring to her employer's attention. Nearby, two of the American aides were chortling about something. As she turned her attention to them, they watched Congresswoman Whelan stride into the ballroom, obviously on a mission. One of the men muttered, 'And she's off,' as if calling the start of the first race at Ascot. The other man smirked. 'God, you'd think she'd have noticed by now.'

The two of them stepped back from the doorway, closer to the potted palm behind which Andrea was hiding. The first speaker continued. 'I always work from the assumption the English are all fruits anyway. I'm only wrong about half the time and the other half it doesn't matter.'

Other than an instinctual revulsion at the crudity and a desire to defend English manhood on principle, Andrea didn't know what to say, so slid further into her hiding spot in case the two men turned around. A minute later they sauntered into the ballroom. Andrea followed and found a spot near the edge of the crowd, across the room from where Mr Holmes stood with his blonde shadow and a gentleman who categorically was not from MI5. Mr Holmes seemed to be surreptitiously scanning the room over the woman's head, and Andrea shifted into the edge of his field of vision. When she'd caught his eye, she approached, pulling up the most recent text on her phone as she wove through the crowd. She stopped a respectful distance away, as if hesitant to disturb them.

'My apologies, sir. Congresswoman. Sir Edwin.' She held up her phone slightly. 'Something has come in, sir.' She put on a solemn face and held out her phone to Mr Holmes. He glanced at the screen and frowned as if concerned, with a hint of upset. He turned to the Congresswoman. 'Please accept my apologies, Patricia, but I must respond to this immediately.' He held up Andrea's phone for a moment, careful to ensure the screen was turned to the palm of his hand.

'Of course. Duty calls.' She glanced at Andrea. 'This gives me the chance to get to know this lovely young woman.'

Andrea forced herself not to recoil from the comment or the unwarranted hand on her arm. Mr Holmes nodded a wordless farewell to Sir Edwin, then strode across the ballroom, brow furrowed, as he pretended to read what Andrea then realised was the text conversation she had had that afternoon with her best friend Siobhan about their dinner reservations for the following Saturday, and whether or not Siobhan should dump her new boyfriend because of his constant demands for oral sex.

When she turned back to the Congresswoman, Andrea saw that Sir Edwin had taken the opportunity to make his escape to the bar. 

'Well, it's just us girls now, isn't it?'

Andrea looked down at the older woman's smile and wondered how much leverage this little farce would garner her. And then she wondered how much leverage she would earn if she managed to find a way to get rid of her employer's problem in Congress.

'How long have you been working for Mycroft?'

'I've been with Mr Holmes for just under five months.'

'You're the only female PA on your side.'

Andrea didn't consider this a question, so didn't respond.

'It seems so old-fashioned, male assistants. Is that normal in England?'

'Some areas of the _British_ civil service do adhere more closely to traditional practices.'

'Does Mycroft have a large staff? He must, his work is so important.'

Andrea repressed a shudder at the almost simpering expression being directed her way. 'No, there are only three of us.'

'But you work most closely with him?'

'Yes.'

'Are you the only woman on his staff?'

'No, we're all women.'

'Is that normal?' The Congresswoman scanned the room; Andrea knew that only about fifteen percent of the people in the room were women and half of them were Embassy staff and spouses. The germ of an idea began to sprout in her mind. All she had to do was find a way to manoeuvre the conversation in the right direction.

'Oh, no. As you observed, many of Mr Holmes' colleagues have predominantly or entirely male staff.'

'He likes to surround himself with pretty girls, does he?' The woman was trying to sound arch and failing and Andrea sensed a hint of something she couldn't yet identify in her tone.

'He likes to surround himself with the most competent people.'

'And modest, too.'

She smiled. 'Oh, no. Modesty has never been one of Mr Holmes' requirements.'

That gave the woman pause and it seemed as though she was going to make some sort of comment before thinking the better of it. 'And do you enjoy working for him? I imagine it must be a demanding job.'

'In my experience, the most interesting positions always are. And Congress must be very time consuming. Constituency work, committees, debates in the House, travel. It must play havoc with your personal life.'

The woman seemed to preen a little now that the conversation was about her. 'Oh, yes. It absolutely ruined my marriage. My ex-husband owns a state-wide chain of very successful car dealerships, but he was always very supportive of my dedication to public service. In the end, with me in Washington, though—I just don't know how Bill and Hillary cope.' It took Andrea a moment to catch the reference and suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. 'But I get to meet so many interesting people that I wouldn't meet otherwise. And I adore London,' she finished with a sigh, as she watched the crowd around them. 

Andrea had already developed a healthy respect for her employer's emotional stamina, but if he managed to get through entire days' worth of this sort of nonsense, she realised he must possess gargantuan reserves of patience as well. Or extraordinary mental filters. When she returned to paying attention to the other woman, she was in the middle of what appeared to be a long paen to the wonders of London's museums and art galleries, one of Andrea's least favourite subjects.

'I mean, every time I come over I absolutely have to allow myself an afternoon at the V&A. So much beauty! I mean, we have good art galleries in the States, too. But nothing like that. Like an education in good taste.'

After having been dragged through rooms chock-a-block with Victorian church silver during a school tour when she was thirteen, Andrea had considerably different recollections of the aethetic value of the V&A's collection, but she nodded in what she hoped was a non-committal way.

'I tried to interest Mycroft in coming with me before we leave on Saturday, but he wasn't able to.'

'I can't imagine anyone who has less need of an education in aesthetics; he already has exquisite taste.'

It was just a throw-away comment, not meant to be the killing stroke, so Andrea was surprised by its effect. The Congresswoman's expression dropped. And two seconds later dropped a little further, and Andrea felt an exultant hope that she might have somehow accidentally hit the ball for six. And then the other woman seemed to rally and Andrea began cursing internally at her premature hope. But then the momentary recovery failed and her fading smile collapsed completely, leaving behind a sour grimace. 

The woman gave Andrea a very perfunctory upturn of the corners of her mouth, then patted her on the arm as she was already surveying the room. 'Well, it's been fabulous talking to you. I certainly hope we get the chance to talk again before the end of the week,' she said, already distracted by the hunt.

Andrea didn't bother replying, as the woman was already walking away. _Done, and done_ , she thought to herself as she watched the woman navigate her way through the dense mass of people, dispatching smiles in all directions. Andrea wondered if she would get to choose her own reward. Not that she worried; her employer had exquisite taste, after all.

When Mr Holmes returned a minute or so later, he scanned the immediate area, but didn't comment on the absence of the Congresswoman.

'She's gone.' Andrea kept her tone as neutral as possible, knowing it was almost impossible he wouldn't catch her real meaning.

He looked genuinely startled and Andrea allowed herself a momentary mental pat on the back. She glanced over his shoulder toward the bar, where unbeknownst to him, Sir Edwin had developed an invisible target on his back.

'Do I dare ask?'

'I can promise that no confidences were betrayed.'

'Because you had none to betray.'

'No, not because of that.'

He turned, his focus entirely on her. As usual, she found the experience unnerving, though she was beginning to be able to discern when his curiosity was being used as a weapon and when it wasn't; this time she sensed it was the latter. Whatever he saw in her face must have satisfied him, though, for he turned his attention back to the drama unfolding across the room.

While he continued to watch Congresswoman Whelan in pursuit of the oblivious Sir Edwin, he handed her phone back to her. 'I wholeheartedly agree; your friend Siobhan should get rid of her odious boyfriend.' There was a wicked gleam in his eye as he glanced at her and she burst out laughing.

 

**iii. discretion**

Andrea stared at her phone for a moment, then dropped back into her chair. After the 'suit incident', she'd sworn to herself that she would do whatever it took to keep a firm barrier between her work for Mr Holmes and his private life. She hadn't anticipated her resolve being tested so quickly, though. There hadn't been time to devise a strategy for communicating her discomfort with the situation to her employer. She enjoyed her job, even though she was sometimes a little unclear exactly what it was. And she liked her employer, a first in her experience of the working world. Considering the way she'd come to work for him, she'd expected a certain amount of unconventionality. But this request was a bit beyond the pale.

Not that she had any philosophical disdain for drugs, or drug users. If that had been the case, her social circle would be considerably smaller. After all, it was 2009, not 1959. And in the back of her mind, Andrea felt a tiny niggle of pride that Mr Holmes trusted her enough to delegate the matter to her, assuming she would come up with an appropriate and satisfactory solution.

So she pulled up her contact list and started a round of calls to friends, cousins, former boyfriends, a favourite aunt, and a few select ex-colleagues who owed her favours. She needed recommendations for a good, extremely discreet rehab facility, and she needed them now.

Seventeen phone calls, a tense three-hour wait, some financial wrangling, a swift brandishing of Mr Holmes' personal credit card information (still a minor, slightly terrifying thrill) and the arrangements were made. Now all she had to do was convince the brother to go with her. Once she'd found him, of course.

To her chagrin, she ended up having to phone the Met detective who'd started the ball rolling in the first place. She was surprised he took her call at all, in the middle of a Saturday afternoon when he was most likely home with his family. She wondered if this Lestrade person (nice voice, she noted to herself, despite the west country/estuary bastardy of it) was another one of Mr Holmes' “stringers”: people not on his payroll, but who seemed to be looking out for his interests in some undefined and unofficial way, for reasons best not wondered about.

'Detective Inspector Lestrade?'

'Yeah.' The man sounded weary, with a hint of 'I know why you're calling and am not happy about it'.

'I'm sorry to disturb you on your weekend, but my employer asked that I call you regarding his brother.'

'No, he didn't.' There was a hint of amusement that she found both annoying and intriguing.

'I beg your pardon.'

'He wouldn't tell you to call me. He'd tell you what he needed you to do and leave it to you to get it done.'

Well, he had her there, didn't he?

'I've made arrangements for Mr Holmes' brother—'

'And now you need to find him.'

'Yes.' She tamped down her annoyance at the interruption, regardless of the amusement at her expense embedded in it. 'Seeing as you brought him in—'

'I've no idea where Sherlock is. We couldn't charge him with anything so we let him go.'

For a few seconds Andrea just stared out the window across the road and over Westminster School to the green of the Dean's Yard, trying to corral her thoughts, which were threatening to bolt in five directions at once.

'Sorry, Miss—? Are you still there?'

'Mortimer. Yes.' She paused. 'You have no idea where he might be?'

'Have you tried his flat?' There was no discernible sarcasm in his response; but then, his association with Mr Holmes was the best evidence imaginable that Lestrade was a lot more than your average plod, and possessed some capacity for tact.

'Thank you, Detective Inspector. I'll start there.'

'No problem. Give me a call if you need anything else.'

After the man rang off, she debated swearing loudly, before passing the remark off with a shrug. She had better things to do with her time than be angry at the man for pointing out her obvious oversight.

Five minutes later she was in Mr Holmes' car, heading west towards Earl's Court. When she arrived, she couldn't help an instinctual recoil at the surroundings. The bookmaker's and grotty internet cafe on the ground floor fit in well with the general seediness of the neighbourhood. It was hard to believe her fastidious, aesthetically repressed employer could be related to anyone who would live in such a place. But then, perhaps that was the point: an adolescent desire to prove “independence” from his older brother's values, coupled with the mistaken belief that his recreational substances of choice would be more readily available in Earl's Court than in Mayfair.

The residents of the flats above the shops appeared to have little interest in adequately securing the building, so less than a minute later she was picking her way up the trash-strewn staircase to the first floor. Through the doors of both flats she heard Australian and South African accents, so she continued on to the second floor. Halfway up, she turned and saw that the door to the front flat was open. Deciding she might as well start there, she continued on, her eyes on the open door in hope of catching a glimpse of the occupant before they saw her. 

As she approached the door, a voice drawled out in a familiar accent, 'You might as well come in instead of hovering out there.' When she stepped into the doorway, she saw a man sprawled along a ratty sofa, facing away from the door. All she saw was a tumble of greasy black curls and long, thin legs draped over the far arm of the sofa. 'You must be Mycroft's new—whatever. Come to take me away?'

She ambled over to the sofa and looked down at her new and unwelcome charge. He was quite unlike her employer in looks, missing the awkward nose, premature receding hairline and slightly endomorphic figure. The drugs hadn't yet ravaged the pre-Raphaelite face looking up at her with a smirk and the borderline prettiness of him was unexpectedly irritating. As she stood there, he looked her over from top to bottom, as if measuring her for a suit, and it was obvious that he thought himself as adept as his older brother at reading people at a glance. She waited in silence for the protests to begin.

'I'm not going.'

She remained as she was, other than to draw her phone out of her handbag.

'You can just toddle off back to Mycroft's lair and—' He waved an indolent hand in her direction as he closed his eyes and turned away. 'Go back to doing his filing and arranging his whores, or whatever it is you do.'

She couldn't help a small choked-off laugh. He cocked open his left eye for a moment to catch the effect of his words. She decided to let him see her amusement.

'You're still here.'

She arched an eyebrow at him; it was almost disappointing to experience a Holmes stating the obvious without irony. Her phone pinged; it was a text from Lestrade. _Did you find him?_

For a moment she considered not responding, but the brother snorted softly and said, 'Tell Lestrade he needs to get his Sergeant after the postman's ex-wife.'

Andrea typed, _insufferable shit found_. 'Yes,' she said as she hit Send.

Her quarry only glanced up at her. 'Well?'

She scanned the room, sincerely hoping she wouldn't have to touch any of its contents in her efforts to get the man into the car currently circling the block. Suppressing a sigh, she wandered over to the grimy window and stared out, willing him to get the whingeing and protests over with so that they could just get on with it. At least he seemed sober, she thought. She certainly hadn't chosen the right footwear that morning for wrestling junkies down staircases.

Behind her, he repeated, 'Well?' and she continued to ignore him. She heard a rustling of clothes, as if he were turning over on the sofa. She stood still, waiting for the inevitable petulant outburst, and it came a few minutes later as she was catching up on a text conversation with her sister about their mother's upcoming birthday party. As she hit Send, she heard a huff, a whirlwind of cloth, feet storming toward the back of the flat, and a slamming door.

Andrea cast a weary eye over the now vacant sofa and, deciding that it was likely the cleanest surface in the flat, sat to wait it out.

Ten minutes later, he returned and stood at the end of the corridor, staring down his nose at her. 'I imagine your parents are thrilled about you working in the security services, seeing as your father is ex-army, your mother is from an army family, and you were raised at ground zero of boring suburban Tory-dom. You have an older sister married to a City banker who is perpetually unfaithful to her but she will never leave because she likes spending his money too much. You used to work in the Foreign Office but you were bored so someone, your father maybe—no, godfather—brought you to Mycroft's attention. You're reasonably clever but not extraordinarily so and you obviously have a high tolerance for smugness or you'd never last a day in my brother's presence without being overcome by the desire to end it all. He never allows his minions to "deal" with me, so either he places an astonishing amount of trust in you or, more likely, he's out of the country and so has no other option, as I know Lestrade refuses to help him in any matter having to do with my recreational activities. Not after the incident with the goose. Not that I can blame him for not wanting to help Mycroft because, I mean, who would?'

The words were delivered seemingly without pausing for breath and Andrea just looked up at him, forcing an impassive expression onto her face. As she turned her attention back to her phone to text Jenkins to bring the car around, she muttered, 'Home Office.'

He made a sound of disgust as he whirled and stomped back to the bedroom. 'Always something!'

'Don't forget to pack your toothbrush,' she called after him, making not an iota of effort to hide her boredom with the situation.

Two hours later, the car pulled off a country road and passed through the gates in a high stone wall. The road took them through a small forest of oak and beech, before bisecting a large open park. The substantial Georgian house stood on a rise, its walls golden in the low evening sun.

The man slumped in the car next to her with an expression of angry resignation on his face as he stared out the window.

'This looks—'

'Boring,' he interrupted.

'I think that's the point.'

He turned to her. 'That's not what you're supposed to say.'

'So?' Andrea held his haughty and withdrawn and, she thought, slightly perplexed gaze for a few seconds before looking away. 'Depressing, this,' she muttered as they came to a stop in the car park.

'You're supposed to say how wonderful it is and how everyone here has my best interest at heart and I have to pretend to be interested in all the idiocies spouted by the herd of morons being paid large sums of money by my brother to fix me.'

'Is that what he says when he brings you to rehab?' He shuffled out of the car without answering. When he turned back to her she shrugged. 'They sell hope.'

'False hope.'

'That's up to you now, isn't it?'

He did a double take and looked at her out of the corner of his eye, wary, as if he were noticing her for the first time. He was about to respond, but was diverted by the appearance of a middle aged woman who looked like an administrator of some kind, accompanied by a male orderly. 

There were introductions and platitudes and Andrea sensed a rising despair and anger in the younger Holmes. She shook the woman's hand and turned to Sherlock. He ignored her and slouched off after the orderly carrying his bag.

As the car re-entered the woods bordering the property, she sent a text to Mr Holmes.

_Delivered. Done._

She left it to him to parse the meaning of the message.

 

**v. political acumen**

_Not again._ Andrea suppressed the urge to thump her head on the desk. While she didn't need to open the email to know what its contents would be, she couldn't resist the urge.

She wasn't surprised to see that the form was exactly the same; the only difference was the name of the department and the (probably fictitious) name of the human resources assistant director named as the signatory. She stared at the message while she twirled her mobile in her left hand as if working worry beads.

It was almost a year to the day since she'd started working for Mr Holmes, and there wasn't any need to ponder the question of whether or not she wanted to stay. For she knew she'd found the place she wanted to be, even if it meant picking up after his lunatic brother or protecting him from over-reaching divorcees. As she thought about it, she grudgingly acknowledged that those were just the sort of things that would keep her there.

While the Exchequer meant prestige—and Andrea was honest enough with herself to admit that she enjoyed prestige—it would mean boredom and more public school oiks. And while the Exchequer might appear to the outside observer to be the seat of power in government, she _knew_ where the real power was. And it was sitting approximately ten feet away, drinking his mid-morning tea and most likely debating whether or not he'd allow himself a biscuit as a reward for sorting out a knotty problem with the Turks.

While Andrea still didn't know exactly what her job was, she'd learnt in the last year that the not knowing was one of the best bits. So she clicked on the Reply button and politely declined Mr Grace's kind offer of an interview with the Exchequer, then brought Mr Holmes not one, but two biscuits to go with his mid-morning tea.


End file.
